


Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Angst, Lolita, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-03
Updated: 2005-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Challenge words: Lolita, milk (chocolate variety), knees<br/>Written for mcee</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

**Author's Note:**

> I owe [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lazulus/profile)[**lazulus**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lazulus/) my right nipple or something for helping me tackle the sentence of DOOM and sentence of DOOM part deux!

  
Elijah knows how Viggo looks at him. Furthermore, he knows why Viggo looks away.

~~

Elijah sat on a picnic table behind Orlando's trailer, legs dangling off the side, the legs of his Frodo-trousers rolled up past the knee. He was in full Frodo mode, except for his feet (which they hadn't needed today, hooray for an extra hour and a half of blissful unconsciousness), which were sneaker clad, laces dangling loose and caked in mud. He was drinking chocolate milk through a hot pink straw with three loops and a squiggle. The straw was Dom's idea of a joke. So was the milk, for that matter.

Elijah made a mental note never to ask Dom to 'mix' him up a drink again.

Everyone else had already changed out of their costumes (Ngila had declared that they would all starve before she allowed them to eat barbeque in costume, even for a 'Welcome Replacement Aragorn' party), but Elijah hadn't managed it yet. Too much work.

Orlando and Dom were playing 'snap' behind him -- a game that sounded suspiciously similar to slap-jack to Elijah, except with loud shrieks of the word 'snap' added in with all the smacking of hands on cards -- with much laughing and slapping and missing and cursing and name calling. And they teased _him_ about his age.

He rolled his eyes and blew bubbles in his chocolate milk until it foamed up and threatened to escape the confines of the glass.

"Juvenile," Dom snorted from behind him, and Elijah giggled.

The flash of a camera half blinded him, but when he turned to look, no one was there.

~~

He's old enough in every country in the world, so it doesn't really make sense. It's almost amusing, the covetous eyes, quickly averted.

Annoying, though.

~~

Elijah and Dom were racing up the sidewalk outside Billy's flat, everything a blur of speed and motion. The wind was cool on his flushed cheeks, and Elijah was completely enthralled by the sound the inline skates made on the sidewalk, whisk whisk whisk, shhhhhhhhhh. Dom was laughing aloud, about two feet ahead of Elijah, and freely mocking Elijah's inability to keep up.

"Fucker," Elijah panted, going for a burst of speed, when he saw Viggo on the balcony of Billy's flat, beer in hand, watching them. Him.

His skate bumped over an uneven spot on the cracked and crazed sidewalk, and he was already off-balance from the attempted lunge for speed, and he fellslammedcrashed into the concrete, feeling the hot, electric shriek as skin scraped away from both knees and palms. He managed to catch most of the fall on hands and knees, but there was enough momentum left over to shove him forward on his chin, and (fuck, Peter was going to kick his ass!) he scraped that along the ground as well for a second before coming to a screeching halt and biting down on his bottom lip hard enough to bloody it, just for good measure.

Fucking Viggo! he thought, and rolled over onto his back to assess the damage.

He didn't, though, not right away. He looked up at the balcony again instead, and Viggo was still there, standing frozen, beer bottle half way to his lips. He was looking down at Elijah, eyes sharp-bright and intense, and Elijah wondered what he looked like -- propped up on his elbows, knees a bloody mess, blood on his chin -- that was making Viggo look... hungry?

What was it about him, right this moment that had Viggo mesmerized?

"Fucking hell, Elijah! Are you all right?" Dom demanded, skidding to a halt beside him (little ratchety sounds from his skates) and sinking down to his knees.

For a moment, Elijah didn't answer. He looked at Viggo looking at him, and felt understanding coming, felt it congealing in his mind, gelling, solidifying. A smile wanted to tug at the corners of his lips, but he suppressed it.

He let his legs splay open wider, and heard a single, guttural curse from above. A moment later, Viggo's beer bottle exploded into a million glittering brown shards less than a yard away, and Dom jumped and let out a little shriek, along with the immortal words: "Bloody Christing Fuck, Viggo!"

Elijah didn't look away from Viggo, and Viggo didn't look away from him. Elijah licked at his lips, tasted blood.

"Elijah?" Dom repeated. "You alright, mate?"

"Yeah," he said finally, and looked at Dom. "Okay, I think. Help me up?"

By the time he'd gotten to his feet, Viggo had disappeared from the balcony.

~~

For the entire first hour after 'the balcony incident' Elijah had intended to ignore it. Then he had seen Viggo with his head bent close to Orlando's, the two of them laughing over something, and he had thought that he probably would do something, after all.

Now he isn't sure if he will, or if Viggo will get in touch with his inner Humbert, first.

He has known Viggo for three days, and they haven't even filmed together yet.

~~

It was a long standing joke that Elijah fell in _everything_ he filmed. It wasn't really true, but it was true often enough that Elijah no longer bristled at it.

When he fell on Weathertop, Viggo brushed leaves and twigs and dirt from his costume with lingering, caressing hands and glittering eyes.

Elijah rewarded him with a shy smile (and a flicker of tongue, to moisten his still-slightly-swollen lower lip) and sultry eyes.

~~

Elijah has him backed up against his car (at least Elijah thinks it's his car, but doesn't really care much if it isn't), and he's looking like he's either going to run or pounce. Elijah thinks either option has potential.

"Fell asleep in my trailer," Elijah says, and looks up at Viggo through his lashes. Viggo makes a vaguely affirmative noise. "Think you could give me a lift home?" He fishes a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, lights it. Blows smoke in Viggo's general direction.

"You're too young to... " Viggo begins, but then stops himself.

There are several seconds of silence, and Elijah smiles, and says: "Been doing it for years."

Viggo looks at him, looks for long moments that are temporally stretchy and fluid. "Get in the car," he says finally. "But put that butt out."

Elijah smiles sweetly. "No." He climbs in through the driver's side, lit cigarette still gripped between two fingers.

It is several seconds before Viggo gets in. He sighs and rubs at his new Aragorn beard fretfully. "I'm going to regret this," he says softly.

Elijah smirks and drags on the cigarette. "Probably. But it'll be worth it."


	2. Both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Trianne, who has never been anything but good to me.

  
He can't tell what's real.

That's what it all comes down to.

He treasures the real, he yearns for it. That's what his art is about, every piece, every photograph, painting, poem, every half-finished stanza scrawled on the backs of faxes, script pages, napkins, each and every moment of symmetry rendered in fragrant paint, stark words, the eye burning chemical sting of developing fluid...

It's about truth, it's about what's real, and he can't imagine what he had been thinking, _just what the hell had he been he thinking_?

There is _nothing_ real about Elijah.

From the first photograph -- taken helplessly, compulsion-at-first-sight, which he had expected to study, to find flaw after flaw (surely those freakishly, inhumanly blue eyes were the result of colored contact lenses, surely there should be some signs of strain on that open, laughing face, surely there was some kind of indicator, captured out of time like a fly on the wing, that there was something _wrong_ with him, something to balance out that glaring perfection), but which he had just studied, instead -- he had recognized that. He had _known_ it.

Even that Elijah-Frodo hybrid had been startlingly, eerily perfect.

It can't be real.

But Elijah is really real in his house, in his living room, looking at him now with some sort of amused impatience.

He is too far away for Viggo to smell the smoke on him -- he is not smoking now, had conceded when Viggo had refused to allow it in his house, though he'd shown no qualms about ignoring Viggo's protests in the car -- but the smoke smell is real, too, heavy and thick in his palate, and what would he _really_ taste like, this boy-man, this impossibly worldly innocent?

 _He's young enough to be my..._

 _But no, turn away, strip off your jacket, and **don't** think that, don't **ever** **ever** think that, throw your keys on the hall table_ , and this isn't real either, is it? Talking himself mentally through this, like it's some sort of highly complicated and devastatingly important task (like defusing a bomb or repairing live electrical transformers) instead of the relatively simple matter of taking his shit off once in the front door of his own motherfucking living room.

"Do you want something?" he hears himself ask, and he can feel Elijah smirking at the back of his neck, and quickly amends: "A drink or something?"

 _Give me a lift home_ , Elijah had said, but Viggo hadn't asked for directions to Elijah's place and Elijah hadn't offered them.

"No," Elijah says. "I don't want a drink."

There is silence, weighty and charged, while Viggo stands with his back to Elijah, studying the grain of the hall table, and trying to convince himself that he is not insane. He is not insane, and this has nothing to do with Elijah's age.

It doesn't.

Elijah's small hand is sliding into his -- much larger, calloused and dirty from the shoot -- and it's almost obscene, the differences. Not just in size, but in everything. Elijah's hand is small and pale and clean and soft. He turns Viggo's palm over and traces a fingertip across the angry blisters along the bases of his fingers -- they will become calluses, eventually, but for now they are too new -- and his touch is gentle, but it hurts. Viggo hisses, a little, and glances up to see him smiling, brightsweetclean.

And that hurts, too.

"You..." Viggo says, but he isn't sure how he wants to finish the sentence. _You aren't real. You should go. You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. You make me want what I don't want to want. You don't know what the hell you're doing._

There are so many permutations of the sentence, so many possibilities, and all of them feel real in his mind. They all taste like bitter truth in his mouth.

Elijah is looking at him with one brow arched in question, pink mouth quirked into what almost looks like preparation for a smile, like Elijah is just waiting for a reason to smile, waiting for Viggo to give him a reason to smile. He has both his small, soft hands curled around one of Viggo's now, and is tugging him away from the door, into the open living room area. He is not looking where he is going, is backing into the room (and Viggo is letting himself be pulled forward, no resistance whatsoever), and even though he sees what is going to happen before it does, he can't seem to force out the words that would make Elijah stop, can't seem to stop himself. He continues moving forward, dragged along helplessly in Elijah's wake like a fluttering bit of rubbish on the side of the road, picked up in the slipstream of a fast-moving, low-riding muscle car, something sleek and slim, but with an engine that takes only high octane fuel, something with wide, road-gripping tires and a lot of brilliant chrome.

The backs of Elijah's calves hit the low coffee table, and alarm flits briefly across his face ( _eyes widen unbearably, pink lips part, perfectly sculpted brows slide upward the barest fraction_ ) before he falls backward, his hands slipping away from Viggo's to sweep behind him, try to break his fall.

There isn't any thinking involved in Viggo's lunge forward (cracking both of his shins painfully on the edge of the coffee table as his boots slide on the hardwood floor from the momentum of his lunge), or in the way he bends over Elijah's falling body and seizes Elijah around the waist, hands doubled at the small of his back. Elijah's body is tense and straining in his grasp, his eyes are wide and alarmed on Viggo's face.

Viggo is hyper aware of this new position, the configuration of their bodies, the way Elijah is bent backward, nearly lying on the coffee table, the way _he_ is bent almost double, looming over both Elijah and the table, the way Elijah's thighs are trapped between both of his thighs, the way Elijah's hands have curled instinctively around his biceps.

But he doesn't move. He is arrested by Elijah's face, bright eyes and softly smiling mouth. "Thanks," Elijah murmurs, voice both soft and hoarse, and Viggo wants to think Elijah doesn't know what he is doing when his tongue darts out to moisten his lips.

But that doesn't taste true.

"You don't know what you're doing," Viggo says, but he doesn't believe it. Elijah is heavier than he looks, Viggo is straining at holding his weight, but he doesn't help him up, doesn't move away.

"Do you say that because you don't want me to know?" Elijah asks curiously (brow crinkled into little petulant ridges). Viggo can feel Elijah's thumbs moving along the tender skin at the insides of his biceps, rubbing tiny fans of sensation into his flesh. "Or because you _do?"_

"I want to know what's true," he growls. "What's real."

Elijah laughs, lovelyeuphoricinnocent, but his eyes are glittering up at Viggo, the irises an unearthly blue, thin ring around huge, shining black pupils, and the contrast is amazing, picture worthy, if only he had his camera in his hands instead of the warmhard planes and shifting muscles of Elijah's back.

"Why?" Elijah asks, and laughs again, artless and unfeigned. "Why not just _not_ know? Maybe it's both. Why not just find out?"

They can't both be real, the unguarded laughter and the cunning eyes, but Viggo can't tell which one is true.

"Because," Viggo grates out. "Because."

Elijah looks almost sympathetic. "Because you don't want me if I'm pure as the driven snow, Viggo?" he asks, smile blindingly bright, eyes intensely dark. "But you don't want me if I like being on my knees, either?"

"Elijah," he barks, and he half wants to choke him, the arrogant little bastard, choke him or kiss him, just shut him up. He does neither. He is shaking with the effort of holding Elijah up (and that is _all_ ), and Elijah's thumbs have burned fan-shaped brands into his biceps, and he is bitingly frustrated at his inability to see clearly. "Just tell me true things. Just tell me the truth."

"True things," Elijah muses, still smiling softly up into Viggo's face. "Let me down." Viggo lowers him the last few inches to the coffee table and pulls his arms out from around him, but Elijah doesn't let go of his upper arms. His grip is remarkably firm.

"Let go," he says, painfully aware of the way he is looming over Elijah, of the fact that a few inches make a big difference in what Elijah can see, laying back like that, but Elijah ignores him.

"I look younger than I am, but I _feel_ older than I am." He is tugging at Viggo, trying to pull him in, but Viggo resists this time, watching Elijah's face. He has his lower lip caught between his teeth, and it is simultaneously erotic and compellingly vulnerable. Both. "I've done this before," he smirks very slightly as he says it, "but not as often as _you_ have." It's slightly pointed, and Viggo feels his lips twitch a little. "I'm not a slut." His eyes glitter from beneath his lashes. "But I'm not ashamed of what I want." A faint blush has crept up his neck, but his voice is steady. "I don't like to have sex with the lights on," he admits, voice a little softer, "because I don't want just anyone to see my face when I come."

Viggo's mouth is very dry. At some point, Elijah had succeeded in pulling him in a little closer, and he can see how Elijah's lower lip is trembling very slightly. He wants to say something, but he can't think properly, and Elijah looks like something edible, laid out on his coffee table, something with no nutritional value, but achingly delicious, and he should not want to find out if Elijah's skin is as fine as it looks, if Elijah's tongue would be aggressive or shy, if Elijah would let _him_ see his face when he comes.

"Also," Elijah said, and that smirky little smile was back, now, complete with the sultry eyes. "I want you to fuck me on your coffee table, Viggo."

 _Maybe it's both_ , he had said. _Why not just find out?_

 _Why not just find out?_

He thinks of Elijah in mud-caked shoes with untied laces, lips curled around a hot pink straw, blowing bubbles in chocolate milk. He thinks of Elijah leaning up against one of the trailers, one knee bent, eyes closed, those same lips curled around the filter of a cigarette.

Both images are equally compelling, both are equally true.

 _Maybe it's both._

It is disturbingly easy to pry Elijah's lips open with his tongue (tasting bubble gum and cigarettes), disturbingly easy to relax and let his weight press down on Elijah's slight frame, and Elijah responds with equal parts enthusiasm and skill, lips and tongue and teeth frantic and needy. He is already arching up, squirming sleekly, all heated wanting, his hands roaming over Viggo's chest, and Viggo grinds down deliberately, the aching ridge in his jeans pressed directly against the matching one in Elijah's jeans. Elijah chokes, breath stopped, hands suddenly helpless and fluttering, and Viggo feels something like triumph.

Then Elijah is pressing back, growling softly into Viggo's mouth, his hands abruptly abandoning Viggo's chest to tug at the waist of his jeans, and the triumph flares hot, splinters apart into the quick and caustic, nerve-jangling pulse of craving.

He breaks away from Elijah's mouth (which is skilled, yes, but too urgent to make much use of the skill, and that is right, that is perfect and real, shiversharp balance between youth and knowledge) just to breathe for a minute, which gives Elijah the chance to mutter: "Off, Viggo, get them off, I want to see..." and some of Elijah's enthusiasm is apparently contagious, or at least the need to see is contagious, because he finds his hands yanking at Elijah's t-shirt with more force than is really necessary (duly ignoring the jarring rip of a seam giving), but Elijah seems torn between continuing his work on Viggo's fly (which is stunningly unsuccessful thus far) and helping Viggo get his t-shirt off. He is squirming too animatedly for either of them to succeed, his breathing short and sharp, and Viggo finally lets go of Elijah's t-shirt with a growl and captures Elijah's wrists, pinning them to the coffee table above Elijah's head.

The slow motion slide of several magazines, a sketch pad, and a coaster barely registers between the insistent upward grinding of Elijah's hips, the shine of Elijah's parted, spit-slick lips, and the wide wide lustshock glitter of Elijah's eyes. "Yeah," Elijah whispers, and closes his eyes for a moment. Viggo watches him swallow, Adam's apple moving beneath the pale skin of his throat, and there is a moment of engulfing vertigo as his mind conjures up the way that would _feel_ around his cock, how it would fucking _look._ Elijah opens his eyes. "Come on," he whispers, lips quirking slightly. "I'm not getting any younger here, Viggo."

It surprises a bark of laughter out of Viggo ( _I look younger than I am, but I feel older than I look_ , he had said, and it made so much sense, the juxtaposition of Elijah's entire character), but only one, because there isn't any room for laughter right now. Right now he is fixated with the idea of Elijah's skin, seeing Elijah's naked skin, and he releases Elijah's wrists to drag the t-shirt up and over Elijah's head and fling it aside.

He just looks for a moment, absorbed in the fine, pale expanse of skin. Elijah has dark, dusky nipples, small and perfect, and when Viggo runs the sides of his thumbs along them, Elijah sucks in a deep, shaky breath. "I want to take pictures of you," Viggo says, which is true, but isn't anywhere near the totality of the truth. He wants to record every one of Elijah's flickering expressions, the dilated pupils with the slender rings of electric blue, the look on his face when Viggo had pinned his hands, that look ( _shocklust_ ) that had contained both innocence and understanding, the smooth, hairless line of his chest with his tight, erect little nipples, their russet color such a drastic contrast again his pale skin, he wanted to take those and keep them so he would remember, later, that Elijah was _both._

"Do it later," Elijah insists, squirming again under his still hands. "Next time, Viggo, _touch_ me now."

Permission and entreaty, and if he'd had any qualms left about whether he should do this, it is enough to obliterate them, at least for now. He touches Elijah, his hands are dark and hard against the pale ridges of Elijah's ribs, and when he hooks his fingers into the waist of Elijah's jeans, Elijah whimpers wordlessly, a sound Viggo is sure his cock recognizes and understands far more clearly than his ears do. He presses his palm flat against Elijah's erection through his jeans, and Elijah arches up into his hand, his back bowed into a perfect, captivating arc, his mouth open and murmuring: "Oh oh oh oh oh" so softly it is more breath than sound.

Viggo strokes him once, upward, still through his jeans, fascinated by the rolling press of Elijah's hips, and he feels almost angry when Elijah grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away, panting, eyes bright and glazed. "Stop, stop or I'll die," he stammers, and Viggo's anger is subsumed by an even deeper, more desperate ache.

He nods and twists his wrist out of Elijah's grip to work on Elijah's jeans, and he can feel Elijah watching him, leaning up slightly on his elbows now. He doesn't look, because Elijah's face is too distracting, and he doesn't hesitate to jerk Elijah's jeans (boxers and all, why quibble about decency now?) down past hips and thighs, pausing only to rid him of his sneakers before discarding them entirely.

"Jesus," he says, sitting back on his heels and he knows he is staring, but he can't stop. He doesn't even want to. Even now, his practiced photographer's eye is noting the things that he wants to keep, the sharp angle of Elijah's right hipbone with the flushed head of his cock just in the corner of the frame, the trail of fine, dark hair just below his navel, the high, hectic flush on his cheeks and his wet, kiss-darkened lips. "Jesus," he repeats again, unable to phrase anything else, and Elijah is abruptly straddling his thighs, fingers at work on the buttons of his shirt.

He smells like cigarettes and sweat and the faint traces of shampoo/soap/cologne from his shower that morning. Viggo doesn't smell the bubble gum he had tasted in Elijah's mouth, but he does smell glue from makeup, and the sharp tang of Elijah's desire, sex-smell, bitter and earthy. "I can smell you," he says, and Elijah's hands jerk to a stop on the button he is currently working on. Viggo watches his eyes slide closed briefly, and then open again, determination darkening them and furrowing his brow as he renews his attack on Viggo's buttons. His hands are shaking, though, and the frown on his face is fierce and frustrated. Viggo stills Elijah's hand with his own. "Let me," he says, and pushes Elijah back slightly, enough so that he can stand up and strip down as quickly as possible.

He feels Elijah's hands on the zipper of his jeans while Viggo is still trying to finish unbuttoning his shirt. Unwisely, he looks down, and there is that vertigo again, making his head feel swimmy and far away, because Elijah is naked and on his knees and Viggo wonders if his shirt buttons are somehow glued in place, because he can't seem to manage them any fucking better than Elijah had. He gives up and just pulls the damn thing off over his head, still half buttoned, and it doesn't even occur to him to object when Elijah yanks his jeans down off his hips and around his thighs, although at some point they're going to have a hell of a time getting his jeans down over his boots.

"Holy shit," Elijah says, and he is wide-eyed again, staring, looking disturbingly ( _unbearably, enticingly, alluringly_ ) innocent. Elijah's eyes flicker up to Viggo's face, and he licks his lips quickly, and then drift back down to Viggo's cock again.

It occurs to him (though he is frankly surprised, since most of his brain is currently housed in the cock that Elijah is studying so intently) that lube is not something he'd been thinking of when he'd packed for this trip, and he's fairly sure even a furnished house in New Zealand doesn't come equipped with it. From the look on Elijah's face, he is pretty sure they are going to need it.

"I'm not going to fuck you," he says, and Elijah looks up at him, mouth open.

"Why the hell not?" Elijah demands, and Viggo lets out another of those surprised bursts of laughter at his indignant tone.

"Lube," Viggo says, and sinks back to his knees in front of Elijah. "I don't have any." He wraps his hand around Elijah's cock and watches his back arch again, and really, that is one of the most amazingly beautiful things Viggo has ever seen, the perfect, eloquent curve of Elijah's body yearning toward him.

"In my jeans," Elijah hisses, panting and pushing his cock into Viggo's hand, while he fumbles one-handed at his crumpled jeans. "Front pocket, Viggo, hurry up for fuck sake." It's there, a mini tube of KY, and Elijah grins wickedly at him, eyes shining from beneath lowered lashes. "I was a boy scout," he says, blinking slowly, lashes thick and dark, shadowing his cheek. He gives Viggo a three-fingered salute.

"I'm going to hell," Viggo says, with feeling, but he doesn't even think about stopping. Not now, with Elijah's cock hard and slick with precome, sliding in his fist with the lazy roll of Elijah's hips.

"Fuck me first," Elijah growls, his voice sending flintysharp quivers of lust that still echo some kind of guilty shame straight to Viggo's cock. Which doesn't stop him at all from squeezing lube directly onto Elijah's cock.

"Lay back," he mutters, to which Elijah mumbles something that might have been "coffee table", but Viggo leans into him, pushing him down with his body. "Height's all wrong, stop being so bratty."

Elijah's giggle turns into a choked little gasp as Viggo switches hands on his cock, using the one already slick with lube to press gently just behind Elijah's balls. "Yes," Elijah whispers. "Yes, now, yes." His eyes flutter closed as Viggo presses carefully, and Viggo can see his pulse fluttering just beneath his jaw, can see his throat work as he babbles syllables without any real meaning behind them. He is momentarily stilled by the short cry that escapes Elijah's lips as Viggo's finger enters him, and Elijah twists and mutters: "It's okay, it's just been a while, don't stop."

At this point, he pretty much has to take Elijah at his word. He moves cautiously, concentrating fiercely on anything, everything, but _not_ thinking about how tight Elijah feels around his finger, how incredibly, impossibly _hot_ he is. He has one hand on Elijah's cock still, moving with a slow and careful rhythm, and Elijah picks it up after only a few moments, hips surging up to meet it, and when he adds another finger, Elijah whimpers, his head rolling from side to side, eyes fluttering, breath harsh and uneven through parted lips. Viggo can't pull his eyes away from Elijah, just the sight of him is decadent, he is rapt, captivated, and he simply has to have this, has to capture it on film.

"You're too beautiful to be real," he murmurs, and Elijah's eyes flutter open, surprise shimmering in them. "It shouldn't be allowed." He can feel Elijah writhing around his fingers, body less tense now, more accommodating, if still so fucking heated that it should be painful, he should be giving himself goddamned blisters, just being in direct contact with Elijah's skin. "I want to unmake you and see how you're put together," he says, nearly whispering now. "Let me unmake you, Elijah, let me watch you come."

"Hurry," is all Elijah says.

Elijah's hands are urgent and Viggo isn't interested in fighting them this time. He lets Elijah pull him in, and Elijah's mouth is no less urgent, no less hungry than before, but Viggo isn't thinking about skill or lack thereof now. He is thinking about the arch of Elijah's super-heated skin pressed along the front of his body, he is thinking about the sounds Elijah is making deep in his throat, needful and pleading and demanding, and he is thinking about the deep ache in his own cock, the tight and twisting need in his balls, and about the feel of Elijah around his fingers, squirmingsearingslicksnug.

"Hurry, Viggo, now now," Elijah is chanting into his mouth, all impatience, all pushing and pulling hands and legs sliding around Viggo's waist and mouth roving over the skin of Viggo's neck, lickingbitingsuckingmurmuring curses and praises with the same frenzied demand. "Now, do it, now."

And Elijah will not allow gradual or meticulous, so Viggo pushes in quickhardsharp, and Elijah bites down hard on Viggo's shoulder, his whole body shuddering, tense, and twisting, but he doesn't make a sound that Viggo can hear over his own discordant breathing.

 _Why can't it be both?_ Viggo thinks, and obviously it can, obviously it _is_ , because Elijah's body is already moving with him, hips bucking upward to meet him, ass velvetysleek and perfect and unimaginable around Viggo's cock, while Elijah's eyes are wide open and full of intense and helpless wonder. When Viggo kisses him, his mouth is soft and open and compliant, no nipping teeth or urgent, thrusting tongue, only broken gasps and a gradually building keen from somewhere low in his throat, something almost too subtle to catch until it grows louder than the sound of their mingled breathing, the sound of the low growl Viggo can hear building in his own throat.

Elijah's head goes back, eyes still wide open, dazed, glassy-bright and unfocused, and Viggo feels him shudder and clamp down on his cock, feels Elijah's cock jerktwitch, quivering and alive in his hand, and he hears himself snarling: "Yes, God, Elijah, let me see," and other things, less intelligible.

Elijah bucks once, twice, hips twisting, out of rhythm now, but that doesn't matter, only contact matters, only friction, only the relentlessly writhing pressure of Elijah's body around Viggo's cock, only the sudden tremors of his orgasm, only the strangled cry that wrests itself free of Elijah's throat and the look on Elijah's face, Christ, the elation, the exultation, the open and effortless joy, and Viggo doesn't close his eyes, even while his own body spasms, his climax rocking him, shuddering even further out of rhythm with Elijah, he doesn't close his eyes because he doesn't want to miss any of it, not the smallest instant.

So he sees Elijah come back to himself slowly, sees him smiling, still all soft and open and warm, sees the smug little grin flicker to life on his face and his eyes glitter with satisfaction.

He sees it, he finally _understands_ it, and he feels the last of his reluctance and shame fade away.

He grins at Elijah, at Elijah's wicked delight, and Elijah laughs, brightsweetclean.


	3. It Does Not Question

Viggo walks into his living room on Thursday afternoon. He hasn't been to his house in almost a week. Helm's Deep is over, finally, had ended about three quarters of an hour previously. He's exhausted, dirty, and he isn't expecting to find Elijah here.

In light of those things, he merely looks at Elijah and says nothing for a space of time that might have encompassed either seconds or minutes. On his third day lacking anything that truly resembled sleep, he had ceased to be able to reconcile his interior time with the reality of time. Time moves differently -- he knows this, he's done this before, but it's like learning it new every time -- when your body forgets what it's like to be inert.

Elijah looks back; he doesn't seem impatient. It occurs to Viggo that they haven't spoken in several weeks. He opens his mouth to say something, and is unexpectedly waylaid by a vivid, impossibly _real_ sense memory of the way he smells, the way Elijah smells when he's sweaty and sated, all languid muscle and overheated skin, so powerful, so _present_ that Viggo has to close his eyes to fight off the disparity of what he can see (the visual reality of Elijah, calm and cool on Viggo's couch) and what his exhausted brain insists he smells (Elijah spent, cigarette smoke lingering in the stale air of Viggo's bedroom, sweat and skin and come and…). Instead of speaking, he hears himself choke a little, and then gasp in a deep breath.

Elijah stands up abruptly, a motion that seems too full of energy, somehow. It exhausts Viggo just watching it. "Let's get you in the shower," he says, solemn and certain, and Viggo is tired, he's so damned tired. "No," Elijah says, "you'll sleep better once you're clean."

It takes him several long, sludgy seconds of thought to understand that he must have said something, must have voiced the objection he had been groggily feeling, the idea that showering is a luxury and sleep a necessity, that he doesn't want to stand, that he needs to sleep. He has no idea what he'd said, precisely.

A minor fugue. No more than a blip, really.

"Shower," Elijah says firmly, and then he's beside Viggo, instantaneous physical translocation, teleportation, or maybe Viggo just blinked and fell asleep for three seconds. It's possible. He knows it.

Even on a good day -- which is to say, even on a day when Viggo wasn't half dead from lack of sleep and stress and spending sixty of the previous seventy-two hours as Aragorn, wading through the blood of orcs and watching his friends die, fighting for his life, not yet a king, but a warrior, a leader of men, even if he hadn't spent the scant moments between keeping the stuntmen on their feet, keeping them talking and occasionally laughing, keeping them _with_ him, and thus with Peter -- Elijah has a certain amount of power over him.

He accepts that.

That's just the way of things between two people, more often than not.

And Elijah would always hold a certain amount of power, no matter whom he was with. Anyone in any kind of relationship -- friendship or otherwise -- with Elijah would discover immediately that he has a way of tipping the scales, throwing off your delusions of control. Elijah is a fighter.

Viggo doesn't know precisely how the balance between he and Elijah usually sits, and he is content not to know, content not to look too closely at it. He understands Elijah's power over _him_ implicitly, and feels no desire to prod at things, no need to measure how much power he holds himself, like a miser counting his pennies.

Even on a good day, Elijah has a certain amount of power over him, and today -- as achingly long as it has already been -- is not a good day.

When he finds himself staggering down his own hall, Elijah half-supporting him under one arm, Viggo doesn't bother to fight him. Power is an illusion, after all, and a tricksy one. So many tiny things can turn the tide. He lets Elijah guide him, lets his clothes fall away under Elijah's clever fingers, lets himself be coerced into the steam and sharply soothing pellets of hot water rattling from the showerhead.

Today he might be raw and weeping, shredded, and Elijah might be mercurial and sometimes almost maniacal, but he is trustworthy, and Viggo is willing to surrender whatever power there is to Elijah.

"Your hair is repulsive," Elijah murmurs, suddenly naked and in the shower behind Viggo. He reaches out a plucks a hard bit of mud from Viggo's hair and then flicks it toward the drain. "Here, get down on your knees." He sounds slightly impatient. "You're too fucking tall."

It isn't until Viggo is actually settled onto his knees in the bottom of the tub that it occurs to him that he should've expected a statement like that to come with a smirk, but he doesn't really consider it for any length of time, because Elijah's fingertips begin working shampoo into the tangle of his hair. Even under the wig, it had got filthy, oily sweat and muddy water, and the fingers kneading his scalp with carefully forceful pressure make Viggo sag forward against Elijah's handily placed thighs and let out a low sound of uncertain classification. His eyelids instantly sag shut, as if gravity is somehow stronger this close to the ground, and he stops trying to think altogether.

For another expanse of uncertainly stretchy time, Viggo is warm, relatively comfortable, almost-asleep on his knees, and distantly aware of Elijah washing his hair, and then the rest of him, and even of the feel of Elijah's erect cock occasionally poking him in the arm or the leg when Elijah gets down on his knees as well to cajole Viggo into shifting position so Elijah can run a soapy cloth down his legs and along the crack of his ass; Viggo is too wrecked to bother with self-consciousness, and if Elijah feels any, it doesn't stop him.

"Okay, Vig," Elijah finally says. "You're gonna have to help me, you're too big for me to carry to bed."

It takes him several seconds to process the words into something with meaning, but then Viggo becomes aware of Elijah's hands under his arms, trying to heave him up to his feet through brute force. He takes a moment to summon his nearly depleted reserves, and then manages to stagger clumsily to his feet, unsteady on the wet bottom of the tub. Elijah braces him with both arms around Viggo's waist until he manages to regain some sense of balance, and then helps him out.

"Bed," Viggo says, and Elijah ignores him, brusquely toweling him dry. Before Viggo's managed to work up the impetus to object -- he's thinking _a little wet never hurt anybody,_ but it's like there's a vast, nigh-uncrossable distance between thought and actual speech -- Elijah's leading him out of the bathroom and down the hall to the bedroom.

He's frankly embarrassed by the thick feeling in his throat that he recognizes as the precursor to tears, but Elijah just shoves him into bed and drags the comforter up over him. Viggo closes his eyes, sure that the next time he opens them it will be tomorrow, or possibly the next day, but that doesn't happen.

He becomes aware that he's shaking. Not merely trembling or shivering, but the kind of shaking that almost hurts, like his muscles are seizing up for a bare second, then relaxing, over and over.

He feels Elijah slide into bed behind him, skin damp and sticking a bit to Viggo's as he slides his arms around Viggo's waist.

"You're all right," Elijah soothes, calm and warm, and presses a kiss to Viggo's shoulder blade, one hand stroking down Viggo's ribs to his hip and back again. Viggo can feel Elijah's hard on poking him in the small of the back, but Elijah doesn't seem to notice or care about that. He just murmurs soothing nonsense into the back of Viggo's neck until the shaking passes, and then kisses him just under his ear. "You're all right, just sleep now. Just sleep."

"Stay," Viggo says thickly, and makes a clumsy attempt to capture Elijah's hand in one of his.

Elijah lets his hand be captured, and gives Viggo's hand a gentle squeeze. "Sure," he says softly, and again, Viggo is certain he will sleep now, he is beyond certain, but some time later he is aching and awake, and Elijah props himself up on one elbow and rolls Viggo onto his back, giving him a long look.

Viggo shakes his head -- it isn't that he doesn't know, it's that he doesn't have the wherewithal to explain that sometimes he can't wind down enough to sleep no matter how much he wants to -- and Elijah leans down and kisses him. His breath is faintly minty, though Viggo doesn't remember him stopping to brush his teeth.

"Close your eyes," Elijah whispers, soft lips brushing against Viggo's as he speaks, and Viggo is distantly and wearily surprised to feel a whisper of heat from that, Elijah's girl-soft lips pulling a bit, the satiny skin catching on Viggo's, which are ragged and bitten and chapped. Feels like silk snagging on calloused fingertips, and Viggo lets his eyes settle closed and doesn't even start when the silk of Elijah's lips moves down to brush warmly against his collarbone.

"Tired," he says, as much an apology as an objection, though he isn't sure why he should apologize, but Elijah doesn't answer. He palms Viggo's cock instead, the small, soft lump of flesh fitting snugly in Elijah's palm. It doesn't harden, unsurprisingly, but Elijah doesn't appear to care about that, isn't attempting to caress, is just holding, palm warm and soft.

"Spread your legs," Elijah orders, and doesn't wait for Viggo to comply -- he isn't sure he could anyhow, his thighs feel like they're made of lead -- just wriggles down Viggo's body and pushes them apart to kneel between them.

Elijah's mouth is hot and sleek, and Viggo sighs and shivers a little, and though he still doesn't harden, he feels himself go warm and loose all over, muscles letting go of tension he hadn't been aware of holding. Elijah curls a hand around his hipbone, thumb stroking along the angle, and pulls back enough to murmur, "Sleep, Vig."

 _Then stop sucking my cock,_ Viggo wants to say, but he just sighs again when Elijah's mouth slips back around him, and there's another soft, sweet wave of that languorous warmth, and he's so fucking tired he can hardly keep track of what he's feeling, but it's bizarrely comforting, the pull of Elijah's mouth gentle and undemanding, just warmth and distant pleasure, just the firm curl of Elijah's fingers holding his hip, just softness and the smell of Elijah's clean skin, and he sleeps.


End file.
